Forgotten March

I am like the forgotten Norfolk christmas pine,
tucked away in a corner of the room,
drooping, parches, branches awry --
a hodgepodge of haphazard limbs,
protruding forth in all directions--
reaching out for WHY?
I do not know.

Hungry for something, for many things
--it knows not WHAT--
for too many stalks were birthed within its pot.
It's time to prune the burgeoning pine--
Cast out the dead wood twigs,
make way for fresh and robust growth
--see if any inner stalks are enough
to carve a path, define a steady road--
for now the brittle needles are soon to drop.

The extremities of the languishing pine
are brown and brittle, just like mine.

A January Freeze

I am as brown as the frozen January earth
-- stunted, stilted, insipid fields of grass
--sickly , pasty, brown shades of sepia and ochre.

All I gaze upon has permeated my very core.
My brain, encapsulated in this head,
Floats above my body of forgotten feeling and attachment.

I look upon the world, removed, and
know that death and life are but the grand illusions
we all toy with and allude to every day.

Relatedness is meaningless in a world of One.
--I long to scream wildly and run unfettered free.
--I long to feel once more the wind and sea.

But alas, I feel my soul has plummeted down
to the half-way house of Hades’ refuge
--where all is calm and brown,
and frozen ground,

And a strangely eerie peace envelops me, ...
as I taste the frosty breath of January.

Black and White/Day and Night

On the by-way to work, a thought in the car--a scrap of paper stuffed in the coffee cup that reads:

"I am a pantheist first and foremost, an ascetic constantly at war with my hedonistic desires of gastronomic pleasures."

I see how the light goes on down that Great Highway, straight as a road... then a tunnel that narrows to one last point of light before disappearing into darkness -- that is nothingness...

At least, I see how you envision death--for that is what the World shows you: light and dark, day and night, good and evil, black and white --

But have you never tasted mists of grey that come before the dawn, or shivered with the daybreak's promise of the nighthawk's song?

Winged Messenger

I belong nowhere and everywhere.

I am nothing and everything.

Where do you alight, frantic butterfly?

How to you reach your destiny,

Winged Messenger?

and what

is the message you bring me?